by Craig Bernthal<\/p>\n
Private Papers<\/em><\/p>\n T<\/span>his week an on-line questionnaire went out from the thought police \u2014 oops \u2014 I mean the Provost, to the faculty in the university where I teach, asking us what we do in the classroom. More precisely, the Provost got it from the \u201cNational Survey of Student Engagement,\u201d which is run out of the school of education at the University of Indiana, Bloomington; and then she bounced it to us.<\/p>\n It is a typical school of education production: How many hours of time do we spend on what kinds of class preparation, what kinds of assignments do we give, how do we make evaluations? At the beginning, the survey asked these fairly reasonable questions, along with a few stupid ones (How many hours a week do your students spend preparing for class? How should I know? Apparently, not many. Do your students have enthusiastic discussions about what happened in class when they are outside of class? Again, how should I know?)<\/p>\n Then the questions began to get strange indeed. I\u2019m going to share some of these questions with you, along with the answers I\u2019d liked to have given, if I hadn\u2019t been limited to \u201cVery often,\u201d \u201cOften,\u201d \u201cSometimes,\u201d or \u201cNever.\u201d<\/p>\n How often do students in your selected course section engage in the following:<\/p>\n Have class discussions or writing assignments that include diverse perspectives (different races, religions, genders, political beliefs, etc.)?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n First, let us note the usual bureaucratic inability to use English. \u201cHow often do students in your section engage in class discussions\u201d would work. So would \u201cHow often do students in your selected course section have class discussions.\u201d But \u201cHow often do students engage in . . . \u00a0have class discussions\u201d is a grammatical train wreck. You\u2019ll see lots of this in what follows, but I thought I should point it out once.<\/p>\n One could also point out that a race\u00a0itself\u00a0<\/i>is not part of the same category as a \u201cperspective,\u201d and that the same could be said for a gender or a religion; rather a member of a race might\u00a0have<\/i>\u00a0a perspective, as might a person of a particular gender. \u201cEtc.,\u201d in the above list is meaningless. It may seem like I\u2019m nitpicking, but the mental confusion displayed by the question is part of the ether pumped out of Schools of Education, into my campus, by way of the administration, and it broods over us like the fog from\u00a0Bleak House.<\/i>\u00a0Believe me, our own school of education can do enough damage. We don\u2019t need Bloomington to gang up on us.<\/p>\n The day I got this questionnaire, which asked me to pick one of the classes I was teaching this semester and respond on the basis of that class (I picked 20th<\/sup>-Century British Literature), I taught W. H. Auden\u2019s early poetry. I think it is fair to say my class had no perspective on it whatsoever, regardless of race, gender, political background or preferred pizza topping. The subject of the class was actually Auden\u2019s perspective, and my students are entitled to their own perspective on that, so long as they\u2019ve understood Auden.<\/p>\n Have serious conversations in your course with students of a different race or ethnicity than their own?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Again we see a blooper in parallel grammatical structure, but on to content. The answer to this one is none, as far as I know. My students are as incapable of having serious discussions about W. H. Auden as they are about the Crab Nebula or the Gunflint Cherty Iron Formation. They know this very well themselves. Students, I have found, are quite perceptive about their level of competence and honest about it when they are not being encouraged to BS. Part of my job is to get them to understand what they would need to know to have a serious discussion about Auden.<\/p>\n Understanding people of other racial and ethnic backgrounds?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Frankly, I don\u2019t know whether my students set aside time for this. I don\u2019t encourage them to. We try to understand the writing of people like Joseph Conrad, and we even try to understand Chinua Achebe\u2019s criticism of Conrad, but I\u2019m utterly uninterested in Achebe\u2019s background and I don\u2019t see any reason why my students should be interested. The only issue is whether Achebe has something enlightening to say about Conrad.<\/p>\n Developing a personal code of values and ethics?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n This one really lets the cat out of the bag. Apparently, we\u2019re supposed to be promoting the latest brand of Education School religion by encouraging students to wed therapy to ethics in the service of whipping up their own ideas of right and wrong. I opt out. I\u2019m a Roman Catholic; I believe that there is a transcendent reality outside of us that we confront and confronts us and that distinctions between right and wrong are objective. C. S. Lewis, at least, is on my side, as are all of the students who have ever complained to me about an \u201cunfair\u201d grade, to whom I never once have said, well, according to my personal values, that\u2019s a \u201cD.\u201d \u00a0But more to the point, I\u2019m a better secularist than the people who put this questionnaire together<\/i>; I don\u2019t think the my students\u2019\u00a0personal\u00a0<\/i>(the survey\u2019s word, not mine) values and ethics are any of my damn business.<\/p>\n Developing a deepened sense of\u00a0spirituality?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Are they serious?\u00a0 See answer above, but double the alarm.<\/p>\n A<\/span>t this point, the questionnaire pulled an interesting little trick. It asked for my background information: date of birth, number of years teaching at the university level, academic rank, race, the usual questions which make you feel that you are being stereotyped. Just when I thought the ordeal was over, this is what appeared:<\/p>\n Earlier, you answered some questions based on one particular undergraduate course section you are teaching or have taught during this academic year. Thinking again about that course, please indicate how much the following\u00a0happen.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll include three of the six questions that followed:<\/p>\n The course content emphasizes contributions to the field by people from multiple cultures.<\/b><\/p>\n Is Joseph Conrad from the same culture as Martin Amis?<\/p>\n Students develop skills necessary to work effectively with people from various cultural backgrounds.<\/span><\/p>\n And what special set of skills would this be, other than extending to classmates the basic courtesies of listening attentively, which they already do rather well? And how exactly am I to tell whether Joe Smith from Clovis is from a different cultural background than Jose Gonzalez from Dinuba? What exactly is a \u201ccultural background\u201d?<\/p>\n You explore your own cultural and intellectual limitations as part of class preparation.<\/span><\/p>\n Ah, we finally get to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We get to confess.\u00a0Mea culpa<\/i>. I could be so much more culturally aware and in love with diversity than I am. I\u2019m\u00a0trying<\/i>\u00a0to turn out the next crop of brain-dead non-judgmentalists, but am I doing\u00a0enough,<\/i>\u00a0I ask myself. Maybe I could therapize my students more effectively by putting them in a circle and letting them give their own impressionist interpretations of \u201cIn Praise of Limestone,\u201d as I smile benignly, promoting their self-esteem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n H<\/span>ow many ways can a faculty be insulted? It\u2019s not just the Sunday school tone of these questions which raises goose flesh, but the totalitarian mind-set lying behind them. We are to adopt a creed of virtually complete tolerance and cultural relativism on the one hand, and to encourage narcissistic individualism on the other, without ever posing the question of whether these goals are in conflict, which they most assuredly are. The questionnaire both attempts to indoctrinate faculty and find out how well the faculty is indoctrinating students in a world view which is not only incoherent but pernicious.<\/p>\n What wasn\u2019t on the survey? Not a single question about whether we stress the importance of reason and evidence in deciding which is the more convincing of two arguments; there was nothing about what we do to stimulate our students\u2019 imaginations or make them more perceptive readers and thinkers. Judgment? Discrimination? The search for truth? (A word in very bad odor these days.) \u00a0There was nothing about these things in the questionnaire. The people who put this out are attempting to inculcate a world-view and an agenda by molding the culture of the university, a culture based on non-thought at best, double-think at worst. I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m part of anymore, but \u201csecular university\u201d doesn\u2019t describe it.<\/p>\n Craig Bernthal is a professor of English at California State University, Fresno.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Welcome to Big Brother’s “The National Survey of Student Engagement” by Craig Bernthal Private Papers This week an on-line questionnaire went out from the thought police \u2014 oops \u2014 I mean the Provost, to the faculty in the university where I teach, asking us what we do in the classroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[199,759],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1qv","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5368,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/paying-the-piper\/","url_meta":{"origin":5487,"position":0},"title":"Paying the Piper","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 13, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Craig Bernthal Private Papers Temperance is not high in the current list of American virtues. We are the 9th most obese people on earth, according to the World Health Organization, with 74% of American\u2019s over 15 identified as overweight.On the expressway, hulking pickups and humvees blast by sports cars.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Craig Bernthal"","block_context":{"text":"Craig Bernthal","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/craig-bernthal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":639,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-positive-role-of-negative-feedback\/","url_meta":{"origin":5487,"position":1},"title":"The Positive Role of “Negative Feedback”","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Craig Bernthal Private Papers \u201cYou can always count on Americans to do the right thing \u2014 after they\u2019ve tried everything else.\u201d\u00a0 Winston Churchill One of Victor Hanson\u2019s most persuasive arguments about why democracies have an advantage over despotisms in fighting wars is that democracies are much more likely to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education"","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5520,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-symphony-unheard\/","url_meta":{"origin":5487,"position":2},"title":"A Symphony Unheard","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 24, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Go see\u00a0The Nativity Story by Craig Bernthal Private Papers Here is the plot and the theme: God creates the universe, not because he needs to, since he is complete in himself, but as an act of gratuitous love. Being omniscient as well as omnipotent, he knows before the initial instant\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Craig Bernthal"","block_context":{"text":"Craig Bernthal","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/craig-bernthal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":380,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-abortion-question-vice-presidential-responses-fall-short\/","url_meta":{"origin":5487,"position":3},"title":"The Abortion Question: Vice Presidential Responses Fall Short","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 31, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Craig Bernthal Private Papers Martha Raddatz: \u201cThis debate is, indeed, historic. We have two Catholic candidates, first time, on a stage such as this. And I would like to ask you both to tell me what role religion has played in your own personal views on abortion.\u201d A fair\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Women"","block_context":{"text":"Women","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/women\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11155,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-randa-jarrar-teaches\/","url_meta":{"origin":5487,"position":4},"title":"What Randa Jarrar Teaches","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 24, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The following piece is by my colleague,\u00a0Craig Bernthal. Since Randa Jarrar fired off her disgusting tweet about \u201cthe witch,\u201d Barbara Bush, being a racist, I, like other members of the Fresno State English Department, have received about a dozen emails asking, alternatively, how we could have participated in hiring her,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Randa Jarrar"","block_context":{"text":"Randa Jarrar","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/randa-jarrar\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5355,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/leaving-the-new-episcopal-church\/","url_meta":{"origin":5487,"position":5},"title":"Leaving the New Episcopal Church","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Craig Bernthal Private Papers Most Christians in America probably don\u2019t know much about what is happening in the Episcopal Church (TEC). It is very small in comparison with the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, or the new, \u201cnon-denominational\u201d neighborhood churches, whose campuses dwarf small towns; and TEC\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Craig Bernthal"","block_context":{"text":"Craig Bernthal","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/craig-bernthal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5487"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5487"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5488,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5487\/revisions\/5488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}